A guide showing you how to start and complete “Sword Hunter in the Decaying Temple” Side Story in Octopath Traveler 2, including the rewards you gain for finishing it.
How to Start “Sword Hunter in the Decaying Temple” Side Story quest
This story can be started by any character in the town of Sai. Sai is located in the Southwestern area of Hinoeuma, between Ku and Ryu.
We can access this location by heading directly East from Conning Creek, or South then East from crossroads between Ryu and Canalbrine.
The Quest giver for this particular quest is a Young Warrior found in the Northwest corner of town. he’s been injured and had their father’s sword stolen from him.
So we head out to try and recover his sword.
How to complete the Side Story
This side story is very combat-focused and comes with a single restriction, you can only use one character for this encounter. This is due our destination of the Decaying Temple imposing this.
The Decaying Temple itself can be found on the Northern side of the Eastern Sai Sands, right in the middle between Conning Creek and Sai. The Decaying Temple is a level 40 side area. This can make it more or less difficult depending on your starting character, as you’ll need to use them unless you’ve completed their story and are returning.
Below are the strategies I used to complete this quest using Ochette, my initial character choice.
Exploring the Decaying Temple
For the initial exploration of this area, I gave Ochette a setup I use often to quickly take out weak foes consistently. This consists of her being equipped with the following Support Skills: A Step Ahead, Boost-Start, Full Power, and Vigorous Victor.
This allows her to use Animal Insticts every encounter, while also using the turn granted by A Step Ahead to grant herself her EX Skill, Indomitable Beast for the Physical Attack and Speed. Between A Step Ahead and Boost-Start, this means the following turn she’d be able to hit at/near damage cap with Beastly Fangs.
The Decaying Temple itself has a few extra goodies that can make this even more worth doing, in addition to the rewards for completing.
When you reach the save point, you can head left and up the stairs to reach a red chest that contains 20,000 leaves.
Directly behind this chest is another one, hidden away behind one of the scroll tapestries. This contains the Fire Dragon’s Glaive, a powerful Polearm that also boosts Fire-based damage.
If you follow the path to the right, there’s also a Sniper’s Bow, which can be good if you’ve not found much else better by this point.
On to the real challenge of this quest, the Sword Hunter who holds the sword you need to return.
How to Defeat Karma, the Sword Hunter
This can be an especially tough fight and will be impossible without being fairly high-leveled. For reference, Ochette was level 47 during this encounter and still struggled a bit until I found a strategy that worked well enough.
There are some things you will absolutely need for this encounter. A way to break Shields without hitting weakness is VITAL. You’ll also want a good skill that can consistently break 8 Shield Points in 4 turns or less. Finally, having access to some form of non-item recovery is helpful.
In my case, I found that Thief as a primary or secondary job solves most of these issues. If you have enough physical attack and a strong enough dagger, HP Thief will allow you to break and recover most if not all damage that was taken previously.
There are a few jobs or characters that can break shields without an actual weakness, being the Dancer with Ruinous Kick, Apothecary with Weak to Poison, Warrior with Vengeful Blade, Ochette with her Latent Power, Temenos with his Latent Power, and Osvald with his final EX Skill. Optionally, you can opt to use an Almighty Soulstone which will be required by anyone not mentioned previously
So my setup ended up being as shown below.
| Character and Jobs | Weapons | Accessories | Support Skills |
|---|---|---|---|
 Ochette  Hunter Thief |  Soulsucker Lockpick | Mighty Belt Protective Bracelet |  Deal More Damage A Step Ahead Boost Start Bolstering Break |
The Lockpick carries this fight pretty well, being one of the strongest daggers you can have at this point with just over 300 Physical Attack Bonus on it. To think it’s a weapon that came from an NPC Winterbloom as well, given how early you would typically go there.
If you’ve completed Partitio’s Chapter 3 Story in Wellgrove, you’ll also have access to the Soulsucker from an NPC in the Department Store. This is only worth the mention here as with Thief, you’ll be able to use Surprise Attack to recover SP should you run low, though you’d have to sacrifice a stronger burst of damage to use it unless you’re using Throne’s Latent Power.
In my set up the general strategy was to use HP Thief four times to break him, and follow that with Ochette’s Beastly Fangs at full charge the first time to deal around 15k damage in a single burst with the applied buffs. After this first time, I used the Thief’s Divine Skill Aeber’s Reckoning instead, as I’d need to hold any Latent power charge given by damage for later use. When he went to Unbreakable Stance, I took my chances with him being low enough to finish off with another use of Aeber’s Reckoning.
Karma follows a cycle of five moves, Stance Change, a series of three skills, and then Killer Karma. Killer Karma is an instant death skill, which always deal 9,999 damage and thus can not be prevented. You have until the action where he uses Killer Karma to break him, or you will lose the fight. This will be the action immediately following the line ‘Karma’s hostility is at its limit’.
At specific health thresholds, he’ll switch stances. Unsheathing Stance, his first stance has 7 shields and 6 different weaknesses, these are Sword, Dagger, Axe, Staff, Ice, and Lightning. This Stance will be used until he reaches 50% HP, or has yellow health.
Tiger and Wolf is a skill he’ll use if you fail to bring him below his first threshold after his first break. Tiger and Wolf will switch Karma’s Weaknesses while letting him counterattack any time an attack misses until he is broken again. He’ll also be put back into Unsheathing Stance, so be wary of that timer.
His second stance is Flawless Stance. He’ll have only one shield, but no direct weaknesses. This is where you’ll need the Jobs and characters recommended above. He’ll still be performing the attacks from Unsheathing Stance, but unless you break him in time he will just take you out with Killer Karma. However, if you can take the damage, it’s good to prep yourself with buffs and debuff him before breaking him.
Should you not bring him below 25% here and he recovers from a break, he’ll attack you normally, with a painful but lower-risk set of moves consisting of Armor Cleaver, Oblique Slash, Ready Weapon, and Severing Sword.
Armor Cleaver is a fairly strong single-hit attack, that also reduces your armor, making his other attacks more lethal. Oblique Slash and Severing Sword are single and double-hit attacks respectively, of which Severing Sword can be hard to survive if you;re under the effects of Armor Cleaver. Ready Attack is a buff that allows Karma to dodge the next three physical attacks, but this can be dispelled by Abating Orb and similar skills and effects.
His final stance is Unbreakable Stance. He’ll have a massive 15 Shields, but be weak to all damage types. To break him in time, should you lack the damage to finish him during this phase, you’ll need to be an Armsmaster or Scholar. Armsmaster is the most reliable of these options, always dealing six hits, should none miss. The Scholar will have to high-roll their attack count or use BP to break in time.
Rewards for completing the Side Story
For defeating Karma, you’ll be given the Keepsake Sword. This is a quest item that we’ll need to return to the Young Warrior for our reward.
Once you hand it in, you’ll be rewarded with 12,000 leaves and a Refreshing Jam.
You’ll also have the ability to use the Steal or Mug Path Action to forcibly take the Keepsake Sword from the poor guy again. Entreat and Purchase are not able to be used as he intends to keep his father’s sword at all costs.
As he’s only a difficulty of 3, Mug is by far the easiest option as Steal requires a high level (50+) to have reasonable success.
The Keepsake Sword is a fairly powerful sword with high Physical Attack and Critical. It also has a slim chance to lower a target’s evasion. It can easily be one of your strongest Swords until much later in the game.
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